Qualityworld
Future perfect?
Girdhar Gyani
Secretary general, Quality Council of India
Quality is increasingly becoming synonymous with cost competitiveness. While we say that quality costs, there has been widespread realisation that poor quality costs more. Besides a business excellence award, there has been a national award instituted for the economics of quality in India, where best companies are selected based on the annual savings resulting from the application of quality tools. Linking quality with the bottom line of companies has been a very welcome development, because the body corporate understands the language of bottom line, so it can now understand quality. This can only be a good thing for the future.
The 21st century has seen industries adapting quality tools like six sigma and team manufacturing and it is becoming an era of quality technology consciously integrating with quality management. The next five years will enable industry to institutionalise this merger of quality tools.
New tools will always come along but the best way is to practice them so that they become an integral part of an organisation and so, ultimately, organisations will use them unconsciously.
In India some major public sector companies have become ISO certified and are trying to compete with the best of the corporate world. The public sector, with government support, could have the best infrastructure and manpower. However, in the absence of empowerment and accountability, it has failed to deliver.The solution will be to privatise the management function with the government having only a monitoring function.
Quality in the service sector is much in demand and this will only increase. The sector application of quality tools has reached high levels in a much shorter time than it did in manufacturing. Six sigma was typically seen as a tool for the automotive industry. Today, it is most widespread in call centres.
Making the public aware of quality is a challenge. Quality needs to be driven. In a supply chain, the public is the ultimate user of goods delivered by industry. We need to educate and empower the public so that the consumer will demand quality. Government, regulators, non-govern-ment organisations and consumer groups have to play an aggressive and sustained role to create such a society.
I personally wish to see quality going beyond product, process or organisation. Quality should be seen as a national issue. Everyone, be they politicians, executives and ultimately the common citizen, should be pursuing quality in all walks of life to build a quality nation.
If quality is to be a national indicator then it needs to be taught and spoken about starting in school. However, the potential for this has not yet been realised. Only a handful of professional and management colleges cover quality and even that is limited. I cannot imagine a postgraduate student in manufacturing technology not being aware of six sigma or lean manufacturing but in reality this is often the case
